Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, December 6, 1993                   TAG: 9312070269
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Ben Beagle
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

YOU WON'T GET YOURS TRULY INTO A FIGHT

The dreaded Christmas-Argument Virus is out there, pal. Its sole purpose is to get you in a foul mood, probably because the entire structure of American commerce has been unable to produce the item you want to give your spouse for Christmas.

I know the scene. There are times when the greatest station wagon driver of them all leaves home in mid-morning and returns from the malls at 5 p.m. She is a broken woman.

If she were a drinking women, I'd expect her to knock back a few before getting along with the salmon loaf.

``I just can't find it,'' she says. ``It's not out there. Do you understand? I don't know if I can take it anymore.''

A lesser woman would start crying hysterically and I would have to slap her face and say, ``In the name of your children, woman, get hold of yourself.''

The driver is in control - being a veteran of the malls - but the virus has surfaced, and we must be prepared to fight it.

I know this sounds like advice your Aunt Zelda gave you 30 years ago, but the way to foil this virus is to think positively.

We must do this when we become frustrated and sad. Just the other day, for example, I became frustrated and sad, and I didn't start an argument.

Nope. I looked on the ``bright side.'' I thought how fortunate it is, no matter how bleak the hours get, that I never feel like writing like the guy who churned out ``The Bridges of Madison County.''

Not to mention the fact that in this wonderful country, none of us has to read ``The Bridges of Madison County'' - which is the kind of book that makes you want to try again to read ``The Return of the Native.'' Or maybe ``Origin of Species.''

And I thought how wonderful it is to live in a society that has invented the TV remote-control that allows us to zap those diet shows with the bald-headed woman who talks all the time and sometimes wears funny-looking sweat pants.

I'd rather be fat than put up with that. I still haven't figured out why she shaved her head.

Think this way along with me and we'll all avoid a confrontation in which we throw the ancestral china at one another. It works, I tell you. You won't find a more engaging, sweet-tempered, obliging and totally charming person than yours truly here at this joyous time of the year.

Honest. I get so nice that the driver gets nervous and calls the children and tells the m to check on her regularly until after New Year's Eve.

Follow me, my fellow Americans. Together, we will establish a new standard of holiday conduct, change the world for the better and bring back the real meaning of Christmas.

And any of you who get into that old fight about whether the Christmas tree is leaning are rotten eggs.